Creepy Yet Fascinating

Animal Inside Out exhibit elicits shock and awe at Perot Museum

The Perot Museum of Nature and Science's latest temporary exhibit, Animal Inside Out, is a testament to the museum's goal of keeping science at the forefront of everything it does. It's also apropos that it's arriving during the build-up to Halloween, as many of the animals on display would fit right in with any good haunted house.

The exhibit, which opens to the public on Sunday, September 22, comes courtesy of the makers of Body Worlds, which had an ultra-popular stint in 2006-2007 at the former location of the Museum of Nature and Science in Fair Park. While that exhibit featured mostly humans with a few animals, this one focuses on the animal kingdom, with a couple of humans thrown in for comparison's sake.

There's no denying that some of the displays edge toward the macabre. But results are as intriguing as they are creepy.

Located in the Jan and Trevor Rees-Jones Exhibition Hall on the lower level, the exhibit comprises six main spaces, showing off more than 100 different animals in all their plastinated glory. Plastination is the process of removing water from a body and replacing it with plastic gels, allowing visitors to see the animals' tissue, muscles and organs in amazing detail.

There's no doubt that being able to view animal bodies close up, inside and out, is a fascinating exercise. Seeing how muscle connects to bone, the intricacy and fragility of a central nervous system, or the density of a body's trail of blood vessels is a science lover's dream. It's also fun that the exhibitors don't merely put the animals on display, but often put them in poses that intimate movement.

But there's no denying that some of the displays edge toward the macabre. A full-grown camel is one of the most striking displays in the exhibit due to its size, the fact that it has exposed muscle and innards — and because its head and neck have been trisected.

That's right, "trisected" as in "cut in three parts," with the cuts being made so that each eye is on the outside, and the main portion of the nose is in the middle. The same has been done to a horse's head. The results are as intriguing — with an inside look at the animals' nasal cavities and brains — as they are creepy.

It doesn't take long to detach yourself from your surroundings, though, allowing you to appreciate just how impressive the displays are. A filly is shown rearing up on its back legs, and right next to it is its entire system of organs, arranged to look as if they were still contained in the in-action body.

A dog, horse head, rabbit and pig are shown in purely blood vessel form, impressing not just with how many blood vessels there are in a body, but also in how the exhibitors were able to extract and arrange them in such a precise manner. Ostriches are shown in three forms — skeleton, blood vessels and plastinate — allowing for an interesting compare-and-contrast.

Other notable displays include two giant squid, two reindeer in full gallop, a bull that looks like it wants to take on the world, and a giraffe that includes a full plastinate specimen and a cross-section of its torso on the platform on which it stands. There's also a cross-section of a giraffe in the lobby of the museum, giving visitors a sneak preview of the exhibit.

Whether you're someone who's obsessed with science or just want to see something you've never seen before, Animal Inside Out is more than worth your time and money. The exhibit will remain on display through February 17, 2014.

A bull in full-on intimidation mode is one of the more impressive displays in Animal Inside Out, opening September 22 at Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

Perot Museum of Nature and Science presents Animal Inside Out

Photo courtesy of Institute of Plastination

A bull in full-on intimidation mode is one of the more impressive displays in Animal Inside Out, opening September 22 at Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

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Vinyl Record News

Dallas record store chain Josey Records opens location in Garland

Josey Records

Vinyl at Josey Records

Dallas music maker Josey Records has extended its reach east: The record store chain, whose empire includes one of the largest single independent record stores in the U.S., has opened a location in Garland, at 1005 Northwest Hwy., at the intersection of Centerville Road, where it's selling its trademark assortment of vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, turntables, music posters, new releases, and music accessories.

This is the sixth location and the third in the Dallas area, joining the original in Farmers Branch which owners Waric Cameron and Luke Sardello opened in November 2014. They've since opened locations in Plano, Tulsa, Kansas City, and Vidalia, Missouri.

The original location is a giant place with 16,000 square feet devoted to vinyl, 45s, CDs, turntables, and T-shirts. They do a good job showcasing new releases and collector vinyl — they made CultureMap's list of 5 best places in Dallas to buy vinyl records — and are known to host album release and listening parties such as a recent blockbuster celebrating Linkin Park.

They made headlines in June 2020 when they acquired the vast musical inventory of Bill’s Records following the death of owner Bill Wisener; Cameron and Sardello both worked at Bill’s, and knew the sprawling collection first-hand.

"It has taken us years to even start going through it, but in last two years, we've made some headway," Cameron says. "Bill's has its own audience, so we created a specific Instagram account, just for Bill's Records merchandise called @billsrecordsvault."

They chose Garland because they saw it as an area that was under-served.

"There are very few record stores in that area of northeast Dallas, Casa View, Garland, Rockwall, Mesquite," Cameron says. "We have customers who live over there, so it seemed like a good place for a store."

The storefront they're in was most recently The Music Store, which sold and rented musical instruments and accessories; but coincidentally, it's next to an address that was once RPM Records, a hip record store from the '90s.

The Garland store follows the same model as their others: selling new and used records and merchandise, and buying used goods, as well.

"One thing that's cool is that each location takes on its own identity," he says. "We buy used CDs, vinyl records, cassettes — we're a used resale business — and what we buy from our customers dictates what that store becomes. For example, our Plano store has a lot of classic rock. So we're looking forward to seeing what Garland gravitates to."

Garland does have one thing that the other locations do not.

"Right now, Garland has this incredible collection of jazz," Cameron says. "We bought a great collection of jazz records — someone called and wanted to sell it. We get that a lot, we buy major collections from all over the U.S., we even make house calls. So we saved it for the Garland store."